


Little Drops of Poison

by Saereneth



Series: Ten Years On (Sandbox by Bosstoaster) [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Gen, Mentions of Past Torture, Mild Dissociation Episode, Shiro's Fucked-Up Headspace, factual discussions of historical poisons and drug use, flirtation, references to vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 12:50:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10899705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saereneth/pseuds/Saereneth
Summary: Shiro had been trying to catch up to them, clawing his way through years of separation just to feel like he was part of them once more, but sometimes it was just too much, and he had to excuse himself for a while so he could come to grips with everything he’d missed.





	Little Drops of Poison

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BossToaster (ChaoticReactions)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaoticReactions/gifts).



If there was one thing about phasing out of time for nearly a decade that Shiro hated, it was having to learn all over again where he fit into the new normal he’d had no input on creating. After having his life violently derailed by the Galra during the Kerberos mission, he’d been given a new chance when they’d all followed the Blue Lion into the unknown. It wasn’t a clean slate, sure, but after a while, he’d finally felt safe enough, stable enough, to be himself again.

Walking out of Black to find the universe had passed him by for ten years blew that stability right out the airlock.

Sure, he thought to himself as he wandered through the lower decks of the castleship in search of… something… it wasn’t like he’d been taken prisoner again, and intellectually he knew he was safe where he was. He was among family, after all. But though he knew the people on the ship cared for him and had missed him while he was gone, he couldn’t help but sometimes feel surrounded by strangers. They knew him—their memories of him had stayed especially sharp thanks to the regular thought-sharing of Voltron—but he didn’t know them, at least not anymore.

They’d had ten years to grow and learn without him, after all. Ten years of living, and fighting, and grieving, and moving on, while he’d stayed frozen between one breath and the next.

Shiro had been trying to catch up to them, clawing his way through years of separation just to feel like he was part of them once more, but sometimes it was just too much, and he had to excuse himself for a while so he could come to grips with everything he’d missed.

Learning that Pidge, the youngest of them, the sweet girl who’d only wanted to find her family, had spent nearly six weeks as a prisoner of the Galra not long after he’d disappeared… he’s lucky he was able to keep his composure long enough to get back to his room before he’d spent nearly an hour being violently ill. When he’d first seen the visor over her eyes, he’d figured it was just another way she’d incorporated advanced technology into her life. Seeing the blank, slightly luminescent sensor arrays flickering between modes behind what he’d been fully convinced were her natural amber eyes broke his heart.

What other horrors had he missed?

Swallowing against the sudden rush of saliva in his mouth as those eyes flashed vividly in his mind, Shiro quickened his pace as though if he walked fast enough, he could get away from the image. The lower levels of the castleship were still mercifully quiet—he didn’t think he could handle interacting with another being at the moment. That was another thing he was still getting used to; the Voltron alliance had grown considerably while he’d been away, and the ship now had support staff. There were still far fewer beings onboard than during the height of King Alfor’s reign, Coran assured him, but it was still a big change from there just being the seven of them.

He continued his wandering for quite some time, getting more and more lost in his thoughts until a sudden draft of air carrying an almost forgotten scent knocked him lose.

“What the…” Shiro muttered to himself, shaking his head. He took a deep breath, and then another, but the scent didn’t change. Narrowing his eyes, he walked forward much more slowly than he had been, eying a recessed doorway to his right. He couldn’t see anything at first, but he could swear he smelled…

Earth.

Once he was closer, he found a translucent door that was already partially open, and beyond it were trees and plants that he recognized, growing from moist soil that smelled like the springtimes of his childhood.

Eyes suddenly damp, Shiro staggered forward, stepping into a small recreation of a Northern hemisphere forest. A graveled pathway led from the doors further into the room, ending in a stairway that seemed suspended in plants. Somewhere to his left, he could hear falling water—an incredibly missed sound that nonetheless felt incredibly wrong coming from inside a spaceship. As he wandered closer to the steps, the scent of water flowed around him making him shake his head again in wonder. The castleship would never stop surprising him, it seemed.

Continuing up the suspended stairway led him to a wide platform where Shiro walked straight into the curved railings separating him from open space where water tumbled from above his head into a forest pond. He tightened his hands instinctively against the rails, grateful for their presence since without them he might well have walked right off the platform in a daze. He knew that couldn’t be the real sky above him, but the illusion was so masterful he could easily convince himself he was back on Earth. The plants were all familiar, the scents and sounds the same; he could almost feel the Sun on his face, could almost imagine being back home where all of the past however many years had been just a dream…

No.

Shiro tore his hands from the railing, his feet skidding on the gravel of the platform. He couldn’t handle another illusion; he wouldn’t be able to adapt to yet another reality, he wouldn’t be able to take it, not again—

His eyes darted frantically around, looking for clues that he hadn’t lost himself yet again. Now that he was looking those clues were easy to spot, thankfully—the metal seams where rocks met walls, the shimmering quality of the sky, the lack of any animal sounds that would make the garden a real forest. Shiro’s heart trembled against his chest as he grounded himself, his breath shuddering in and out of him.

He was in the Castle of Lions, in space, with his team. There were others onboard the castleship now, it was true, and he felt like he could barely recognize the other paladins sometimes, but reality hadn’t shifted around him again. This garden reminded him of a place that had been his home once, what felt like a thousand years ago, but it didn’t mean he was losing his grip on what little he’d been able to make into a home for himself here.

Swallowing hard, Shiro looked around the platform again, trying to decide if he’d be better off going on through the rest of the garden or continuing his walk through the lower decks. He didn’t want to risk another dissociation episode, so staying where he was didn’t seem like the best plan, but he also didn’t feel like he was ready to deal with being social with the others jut yet, either. Heaving a sigh, he decided to go with the garden; after all, it wasn’t like wandering through the underbelly of the castleship had done him much good, if he’d been so easily knocked off his feet like that.

Heading towards the side of the platform opposite the stairs he’d taken to get there, Shiro headed through a [rounded tunnel](https://thumbs-prod.si-cdn.com/gFVwSQJnVv31Tuc0Z_4tFGXtbC8=/fit-in/1072x0/https://public-media.smithsonianmag.com/filer/4e/f8/4ef87b4d-18fa-48a1-b8ca-865bb065c928/mw_poison_garden_tunnel.jpg) covered with what looked like some kind of ivy that shown such a bright green in the light around it it turned everything inside a similar color. The tunnel was only a few feet taller than him, and Shiro thought with some amusement that some of their allies would have a hard time making it through. Kolivan, for example, would have to bend nearly in half just to fit.

Shiro followed the tunnel as it curved back and to the left, going behind whatever it was that kept the indoor waterfall going beside the balcony. This was a pretty big use of space for something that seemed to serve no purpose other than aesthetic, though he supposed that the castleship was pretty enormous for housing only a few dozen beings.

After following the tunnel’s curve nearly 180 degrees, it finally opened up to reveal another garden. This one looked a lot like the manicured gardens he’d seen at government buildings and museums, with geometric paths cutting between orderly raised beds of plants. Oddly enough, some of the beds appeared to be caged in, though the one that Shiro could see most clearly seemed to hold nothing more dangerous than tall, jagged spikes of flowers so deep blue as to be almost violet. A small frown on his face, Shiro walked further into the garden, wondering what it was that kept some plants caged off from the rest. None of the plants looked like they were moving, and there didn’t seem to be a particular order to which parts of the garden had caged off plants and which didn’t.

The first caged plant was placed in the middle of a crossing of pathways in a circular bed; when he walked around to the opposite side, he found a tiny plaque with English writing on it.

‘ _[Aconitum napellus](https://thumbs-prod.si-cdn.com/arZyCI2ZZ8Pwm33kieZSUja1uHo=/fit-in/1072x0/https://public-media.smithsonianmag.com/filer/64/e9/64e97c48-6693-47db-be85-1117edcc3604/mw-aconitum-napellus-monkshood.jpg)_ ,’ the plaque read. It didn’t mean much to Shiro; beyond sounding Latin, and thus indicating that this was possibly an Earth plant, the name did nothing to tell him what made it special and certainly did nothing to tell him why a plant would need to be behind bars.

The other plants nearby, while also labeled neatly, also didn’t tell him much. Tall, fern-leafed plants with tiny clusters of white flowers called ‘ _[Conium maculatum](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b2/Conium.jpg/800px-Conium.jpg)_ ’ and ‘[ _Cicuta_ _virosa_](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Cicuta_virosa_-_Oslo_Botanical_Garden_-_IMG_8917.jpg/220px-Cicuta_virosa_-_Oslo_Botanical_Garden_-_IMG_8917.jpg)’ looked similar to each other but not to any of the other imprisoned plants. Those that weren’t locked up didn’t do much to help him, either: ‘ _[Lupinus perennis](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Mainelupin.jpg/220px-Mainelupin.jpg)_ ,’ while tall with star-shaped leaves and blue-purple flowers, had no restrictions and was starting to lean out of its raised bed to block the pathways nearby.

The caging wasn’t limited to small plants, either. On the far side of the garden from the tunnel entrance, what could best be described as a small tree was surrounded by an elaborate fence, though that didn’t do much to keep the massive, trumpet-shaped flowers that morphed from purple to orange from top to bottom from hanging from the branches and nearly smacking Shiro in the face. Those flowers honestly looked like something that should be alien, but they too had a Latin name printed beside them. ‘ _[Brugmansia vulcanicola](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Brugmansia_vulcanicola.jpg)_.’ He made a face at them, grumbling as he finally managed to get past the ridiculous looking flowers to the other side of the path.

“Hey, Shiro!” Lance’s voice made him jerk, head thwapping back into the trumpet flowers with an absurd sound. He was surprised to find he wasn’t as startled as he would have been if someone had surprised him earlier—maybe battling with the cartoon candy flowers had been amusing enough to lift his mood after all.

“Hey there, Lance,” Shiro returned, giving the flower one last vindictive shove and stepping away from the plant for good. “What are you up to?”

“Oh, you know, just wandering around, enjoying Pidge’s murder garden,” Lance replied, smirking at Shiro’s fight with a tree. “That flower giving you some trouble there, big guy?”

“No, Lance, it’s fine. I think this plant’s just a little overgrown, and I’m a little over tall for it. Wait. This is Pidge’s garden? And why is it a murder garden?”

Lance laughed. “Over tall. Sure, we’ll go with that,” he said, laughter dying down to snickering. “Those are Angel’s Trumpets, by the way, people grew them everywhere in Cuba.”

“Ugh,” Shiro replied, glaring at the plant. “Why.”

“Oh god Shiro, your face… what did that plant do to you?”

“I’ve just never seen anything that color that wasn’t animated for a little girl’s preschool tea party.”

Lance raised his hand, one finger up like he was ready to defend something, though whether it was the plant, animations, or girl’s preschool tea parties, Shiro wasn’t sure, because just as he opened his mouth, Pidge popped up behind him.

“Ugh, I know, right?” she said, rolling her eyes and tugging on one of the flowers. “When I was planning this garden, I knew I had to have a _Brugmansia_ of some sort, but when Lance showed me pictures of this kind, I figured the breeders must have been on drugs or something. I mean, who wants to plant flowers that literally look like unicorn vomit?”

“Allura, apparently,” Lance said, his huge smirk tugging on his scar in a way Shiro would have thought would be uncomfortable. “She took one look at them and had to have them.”

Shiro narrowed his eyes as he started at the plant. That… didn’t surprise him, actually. The princess had elegant taste much of the time, but left to her own devices, ‘preschool tea party’ did seem like a fairly accurate description of her aesthetic.

“Why did you have to have one of these…” Shiro leaned over to catch the tree’s nameplate again. “ _Brugmansias_ , anyways?” he asked Pidge. “And why did he,” he pointed at Lance, “call this your ‘murder garden.’”

Pidge burst out laughing. “Oh man Shiro, you look so offended.” She pulled off her visor to wipe at her eyes, and Shiro felt himself tipping back into the blackness that had sent him wandering the lower levels in the first place. Another chuckle from Pidge and a discreet nudge from Lance pulled him back. While Lance’s face was still smiling and relaxed, his eyes seemed to tell Shiro: ‘ _I know where you just went, and I get it. Come back._ ’

Shiro swallowed and leaned into Lance slightly, grateful that the other man didn’t call him out any further.

“This,” and their attention was pulled back to Pidge as she swept her arms around the garden. “Is my response to the Olkari teaching me more about the ‘forest’ part of my bond with Green. It’s a poison garden, not a murder garden, exactly, or at least it was going to be until I found out there were so many interesting non-poisonous plants and had to deviate a little from the original plan.”

“That’s the subtitle of Pidge’s autobiography, by the way,” Lance stage-whispered, nudging Shiro in the side again. “’ **Interesting Things that Made Me Deviate from the Original Plan**.’” Shiro couldn’t help himself, he snickered alongside Lance, then laughed aloud when Pidge’s foot hit the other man in the thigh, pointedly _**not**_ where it would have really hurt.

“The Angel’s Trumpet,” Pidge said, turning around to grin viciously at them, “is actually a great plant for Lance to have spent his childhood around, given the way he turned out.” Lance’s “Hey!” was completely ignored as Pidge continued. “It’s said that prostitutes of the Victorian era would keep these at their tables and use it to spike the tea of their clients when they met. The men would fall into a daze, undergo an LSD-like trip, then wake up in the morning convinced they’d had the night of their lives.”

“You’re an LSD-like trip,” Lance grumbled, making a face at Pidge.

“Aw, Lance,” Pidge cooed, leaning forward. “Are you saying I’ve given you the night of your life?”

This time, both Lance and Pidge cracked up as Shiro sputtered.

“Shiro, buddy,” Lance said, thumping him on the back with far more enthusiasm than was really necessary. “You have got to stop being so easy! Desensitization therapy only works if you, you know, get desensitized!”

“What if,” Shiro wheezed, glaring at both of them, “you just stopped being so ridiculous instead.”

“HA!” Pidge yelled right in his face. “Trust us, that’s definitely not going to happen.”

“Yeah,” Lance agreed. “Probably best for everyone if we corrupt you to match the rest of us.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Pidge's "murder garden" is based on the Alnwick Garden, which you can read about in the Smithsonian Magazine's fantastic article "Step Into the World's Most Dangerous Garden (If You Dare)." Obviously, Pidge not only dares, she dares enough to recreate her own version of the garden, and on an air-tight spaceship no less! 
> 
> To be fair, while all of the plants depicted in this story are definitely toxic, Do Not Eat Ever, with the exception of the hemlocks they're all things I've planted and grown myself. I'm proud to say that my own aconitum napellus (more commonly called wolsfbane, monkshood, or devil's helmet) is six feet tall and almost as wide, and blooms in October/November when practically all my other plants are dead. It's gorgeous and is by far my favorite plant in my garden. 
> 
> The compound that makes it so poisonous, aconitine, is part of the alkaloid family. Get me drunk sometime and I'll tell you all about why the alkaloid family is my absolute favorite class of chemical compounds.


End file.
